Spain in 2000 was one of Europe’s most politically stable countries as well as one of its most prosperous. These facts served to underline the sudden and vicious return to Spanish civil life of the Basque terrorists and an uncharacteristic outbreak of ethnic intolerance.

The March 12 general elections served to ratify the right-wing administration of the Popular Party (PP), led by Prime Minister José María Aznar López. Aznar was reelected with an unexpected outright majority, defeating the leftist electoral coalition of former communists and socialists. This defeat prompted a reshuffle within the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE); the more centrist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero succeeded Joaquín Almunia as secretary-general.

With 52% of the vote, the PP won 183 seats (up from 156 seats) in the lower house of the parliament and therefore gained an absolute majority. The second party, the PSOE, earned 125 seats (down from 141). The second member of the leftist coalition, the United Left, earned only 8 seats (down from 21). The other seats were distributed among an array of regionalist and regional nationalist parties, particularly in Catalonia, the Basque region, and Galicia.

Unquestionably the most dramatic event of the year was the return to terrorism by Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Basque separatist organization, breaking a self-declared cease-fire that had held for more than one year. On January 21 Spanish Army Lieut. Col. Pedro Antonio Blanco García was murdered, and the following day nearly one million Spaniards took to Madrid’s streets to protest the killing. A number of assassinations and acts of violence ensued, including the murders of a journalist and several PP and PSOE local politicians.

On August 7 four ETA members were blown up in a car loaded with guns and explosives in an industrial neighbourhood in Bilbao. One of the victims, Patxi Rementeria, was the chief of ETA’s sanguinary Commando Vizcaya. The near-instinctive reaction among radical nationalists was to blame the state security forces for the bombing. In an effort to prove that this blow had not impaired its organizational capacity, ETA embarked on a dramatic crescendo of violence. A wave of vandalism and arson spread across the northern Basque provinces. On August 8 Basque business executive José María Korta was killed in Zumaya, near San Sebastián. A few hours later nine people were injured near Madrid’s Chamartin train station. The spate of assassinations and other attacks dramatically increased in the ensuing months.

The deadliest episode took place on October 30, when Supreme Court Judge José Francisco Querol Lombardero, together with his driver and bodyguard, were killed in Madrid. More than 60 passersby were also wounded, including one who later died. On November 2 two people were injured in a public garden in Barcelona, where Aznar had planned to attend an award ceremony. In most of these instances, bombs were planted in parked cars and detonated by remote control. On November 7 police arrested several suspected ETA members after two had been refused asylum in Madrid by the Cuban embassy. Ernest Lluch, health minister under the first Spanish socialist government (1982–86), was assassinated in Barcelona on November 21. This killing was timed to mark the 25th anniversary of the monarchy, which the terrorists had regarded as one of their main targets.

Aznar’s military crackdown on ETA and refusal to negotiate had resulted in a number of arrests over the years, but they had apparently not deterred the organization or impaired its capacity to reinvent itself in ever more radical manifestations. ETA had repeatedly shown that it could survive the loss of senior leaders, perhaps compensating through further radicalization. ETA’s leadership reportedly now included many women. Earlier random killings of police officers, members of the armed forces, and, more recently, politicians passed a new threshold when such persons as journalists and other public figures became “legitimate” targets for ETA violence. The organization carried out more than 20 assassinations during the year, the highest toll since 1992. The strength of civil society, both in the Basque country and Spain at large, was demonstrated, however, by gargantuan protest marches against terrorism, with crowds swelling up to a million strong.

Also disturbing was the upsurge of xenophobic violence culminating with anti-immigrant street riots on February 13 in the prosperous Andalusian town of El Ejido, where North African immigrants made up about 10% of the population. This was one of the most serious instances of racial violence in modern Spain, perhaps reflecting an infection of the global disease of increased intolerance of foreigners. The attacks occurred only two days after the parliament passed a bill allowing 70,000 illegal immigrants to take up residency.

The consequences of terrorism on the political system included intense polarization. Most importantly, an anti-terrorism pact signed by the PP, the PSOE, and a few minor parties had been repudiated as profoundly illegitimate by both Catalan and Basque nationalists, as well as by the United Left.

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